By Chris Kyne, Reporter
The Water Conservation Emergency in Sterling remains in effect through Sept. 15.
The Water Conservation Emergency requires outdoor lawn watering using sprinklers or automated irrigation systems being restricted to the water user’s trash day between the hours of 6 p.m. and 9 a.m. If the user does not have town trash service, the user should water on the same day as the nearest town trash customer.
“During the winter months we average about 12,000,000 gallons of water a month,” Acting Water Department Superintendent Jeffrey Nutting said. “In the summer we pump 25,000,000 gallons of water a month. So your usage doubles, and obviously it has been raining like crazy lately, but we were in a drought and we also have a well shut down. This causes the pumps to just pump 24/7 and some days they are not able to keep the water tanks full.”
In the past, the water ban called for odd/even watering from May 1 through Sept. 15 outside the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“The idea was to replace the odd/even with once-a-week on the day that rubbish is collected and if you give it a good soaking once a week, it can be just as healthy as every other day,” Nutting said. “We are looking to reduce water consumption during the summer months but you can still obviously water your gardens and plants but the motivator was between the pressure on the wells and the pressure from doubling the usage in the summer and then having a well down, we just thought it was a good idea to implement this and then reassess going forward.”
The Route 12 well is out of use and will be for the foreseeable future putting greater demand on the remaining wells. Recently, there have been 24-hour periods during which water consumption has been more than twice the average daily water usage for the year. This means the amount of water pumped cannot keep up with the demand and the water levels in the water tanks decline.
“We are in the process of looking for an additional well site but that usually takes 7 to 10 years with the permit process and that’s if you have a water source,” Nutting said. “Even though the population here in Sterling is not going up that much, every time we add somebody that’s another draw onto the water that we already have.”
“We are going to have to have an engineering firm look at what our alternatives are,” Nutting added.
As for water testing, Nutting said that is taking place on a regular basis as required by the permit with no issues to speak of.
Private irrigation wells are not required to follow the water conservation measure, however, because that irrigation wells are taking water from the same aquifer as Sterling’s drinking water wells, users of private wells are also asked to use water wisely.
Town water is supplied from three wells in West Sterling and previously, a single well on Route 12 near West Waushacum Lake. When all wells are on line, they have the capacity to pump approximately 1500 gallons per minute into the distribution system. Sterling pumps an average of 610,000 gallons of water per day which equates to approximately 222 million gallons per year.
There are roughly 68 miles of water mains and over 450 water hydrants in our distribution system. At present, there are 2,217 water service connections including 2125 residential connections which serve approximately 80% of the population. The remainder of town residents use private wells.
Water pressure and storage is supplied by two water tanks each with an overflow level of 736 feet. The tank on Osgood Rd is approx. 800,000 gallons and is a wire wrapped pre-stressed concrete tank. The tank on Kendall Hill is a 250,000 gallon steel tank. The new underground tank on Tuttle Rd. is a poured- in-place concrete tank and has a capacity of 1.3 million gallons.